Steele goes on the defensive

CLEMSON – Clemson defensive coordinator Kevin Steele came to Tuesday’s press conference with the media armed with a piece of paper and a sense of frustration.

The first question posed to Steele was a generic one asking about Virginia Tech, but it took just one more question to get Steele right to the point and on the defensive.

A reporter asked Steele why the Tigers had trouble stopping the run against the Gamecocks – especially the quarterback – and Steele grabbed the piece of paper he had brought, pushed his chair back from the table and went into coach mode as he endeavored to explain what happened to Clemson’s rush defense.

“OK. I'm glad you asked that,” Steele said to the media. “I'm going to answer it. They ran the ball 44 times for 151 yards. That's a lot of runs. But that's just 3.4 yards a carry. That's winning football in anybody's book. Stopping the run means we're making a run call and the defense is playing the run. And they are running the ball.

“Now they called a pass play and guys ran down the field and our guys covered them. And their quarterback pulls the ball down. He carried the ball 76 yards on seven carries. That leaves 75 yards, even in Dillon math, for called runs. So, when you start talking about that, people need to understand the game. You can’t say they ran the ball.”

The Gamecocks rushed for 210 yards, so Steele is taking out the quarterback scrambles and adding in the sacks which count as lost yardage, into his numbers, which he tried to clarify.

“Well, stopping the quarterback running for 76 yards when they're running pass routes and you have rushers, obviously if it's a four-man rush, there are more than four gaps up there. The first one, a 34-yard scramble, it was a guy who has played a lot of football. He was lined up in the B-gap, and for whatever reason he goes inside and loses his rush lane. The next one was we had a 13-yarder, a young guy in the secondary who is supposed to come off the edge and blitz.

“And it's so easy that if Tig [Willard] goes over there, you go over to the other side and rush off the edge. And he didn't do it, and their guy comes out. So, I can't explain it any better. It's basically do your job on something we work on and that's simple. As far as the run game, on called runs, they averaged 3.4 yards a carry. And that's winning football. Now, the scrambles killed us. And the 55-yard pass and the 49-yard pass, we had two missed tackles and a guy let another one go in man coverage. I don't know what to tell you on that. We have to make the play.”

Steele said the defensive gameplan is simple, it comes down to people doing their job and if they don’t, that falls into his lap.

"We have to be more accountable and responsible to do our job,” he said. “If it's something that's not repped in practice or coached in practice, that's on me. So the other part, if the play is there, why are guys not making the plays? We have to teach tackling better. We have to teach double coverage better. The plays are there, but we're not making the plays. Enough said."

He was then asked if the problems could be fixed in a week, and he said, “We better. We better fix it."

He said it was frustrating because he has certain players who are doing their job.

"We have some older guys who have played a lot who need to be more accountable and responsible, but not that many,” he said. “Because we have some who are playing really well. Coty [Sensabaugh], lights out. [Andre] Branch, lights out. [Brandon] Thompson, lights out. But the problem is that there are 11 guys out there."

The defense looks confused pre-snap, and even post-snap, and Steele said that even in Game 12 inexperience shows.

“It's four or five key plays in a game,” he said. “The worst part is, when you take guys like DeAndre [McDaniel], Gilly [Marcus Gilchrist] and [Da’Quan] Bowers off the field, then replacing that experience in terms of knowing what they're seeing and responding quickly, you can hide it at some positions and some, you can't."

Steele then went on to talk about negative people.

"We live in such a negative world,” he said. “This is such a negative world, particularly this country. It's amazing to me how negative people can be. I'm more upset about all that than anything else - the negativity these guys are exposed to. And not me. I don't want to get on a Mike Gundy [tirade], 'I'm a man.' I get compensated for what I do. But these are 18-22 year old kids. Some of them have not played a lot of football. They're growing and they're talented and they're going to be good. Right now the results are not what we want. I'm more frustrated with that 10-percent out there.

“You don't hear from the 90-percent, the people who really have a job who are trying to work and raise the kids and have jobs. It's the 10-percent who complain about the water meter, the phone, everything. They spend all day emailing everybody about the problems in the world and don't do anything to fix it. And that's what our kids hear. I don't answer the phone. I don't hear it. I'm in a submarine back there. I don't read the newspapers, so we're sheltered from it. We're in a hole. We don't know it. We know it's there, but we don't know it. But our kids, they're exposed to it. Now, if you're a true believer in what we're trying to do, is that what you do trying to prepare your team for a championship game? I don't think so."